Editorials

Dialogue good step toward equal pay

Longmont Times-Call

Posted:
04/14/2014 12:23:08 PM MDT

Updated:
04/14/2014 12:23:54 PM MDT

In 1979, women made 62 percent of the average salary that men did, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Today, despite the passage of the Equal Pay Act 51 years ago, prohibiting "sex-based wage discrimination between men and women in the same establishment who perform jobs that require substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility under similar working conditions," a big gap remains.

President Barack Obama said this week that women now earn just 77 percent of average for full-time employment.

It's no secret that people often get uncomfortable talking about their salaries and finances.

The president signed two new executive orders this week in hope of expanding the dialogue about salaries. One prohibits federal contractors from telling employees they can't share salary information with co-workers, while the other directs the Labor Department to collect data about salaries from federal contractors.

The president shouldn't have been too surprised that this week's action quickly brought up a dialogue about salaries at the White House, after the American Enterprise Institute analyzed White House records and said women staff members earn 88 percent of what men earn on average.

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The White House confirmed that but said salaries are equal for people of both sexes doing the same job. That indicates that men tend to hold the better-paying jobs at the White House — and being shut out of those kinds of jobs is one of the factors that can hold women back in earnings.

The American Association of University Women, which lobbies for equal pay, points out that the wage gap in the Washington, D.C., area is far less severe than other parts of the country.

In Colorado, the group says, women earn 80 percent of what men earn for full-time, year-round work.

The gap is highest in Colorado's 2nd Congressional District (71 percent) and 4th District (76 percent).

The president's actions this week affect only people who work for federal contractors, not the broad population.

Help for people across the board could have come from the Paycheck Fairness Act, but Senate Republicans blocked it on Wednesday.

Similar to the executive orders, the act would have made it illegal for any employer to penalize employees who discuss their salaries, and would have directed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to collect pay information from employers.

Obviously, experience and education should be factors in what a woman or a man is paid. But the United States needs to come to terms with the factors that keep women in lower-paying jobs.

The dialogue that can start with the new executive orders will be a good first step.

The dialogue cut off by the Senate inaction would have been even more valuable to finally gathering accurate information to better quantify the wage gap and possibly start to finally close it.

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